Robotic sentry gun

Reader [aaron rasmussen] and his brother Ezra built this awesome robotic sentry gun. The gun is an airsoft replica of an FN P90 and fires 6mm BBs. Pan and tilt are controlled by two hobby servos using a simple controller. Aaron wrote custom software to watch the usb webcam and track targets. There is a video on the site of it being tested

All it takes is one loon with the source code to place a real auto-turret on a city block or the like. Personally I would like to avoid any responsibility for that, and understand why he may be hesitant to release source code.
I would also have to agree with those intrested merely in recreational use or a sentry as a deterent. Other than tracking, such a turret could also turn on lights around or inside the house, and if you really want to do damage, activate the sprinkler system (or a hose cannon) while the suspect is on the lawn. Firearms are far to dangerous for this system, and airsoft is dangerous with little kids around.
An improvement if you’re not going for a very mobile system would be to use several satelite cameras, allowing the gun to calibrate its-self, track multiple targets outside its view/range, judge distances to targets, and make it capable of continued operation should it be hit by paintballs. (Place paint grenade booby traps on the other cameras to prevent sabatoge). The same 3 or more cameras could also provide the guidence for lots of sentries, assuming you want them to fire in the same region. eg. protecting a fort or clearing.

“All it takes is one loon with the source code to place a real auto-turret on a city block or the like.” – mark coelho

Highly doubtful. The amount of recoil a real rifle has means you’d need a seriously heavy and reinforced base. It wouldn’t be something you could just jump out of your car with, plop down and scurry away from.

To the guy who’s angry that he can’t setup a real lethal sentry gun in his house for self defense. What happens if you are not home, and your coffeemaker malfunctions and starts a fire in the kitchen and your sentry gun shoots the firefighters as they come in your house? Or, your mom has a stroke on the second floor & calls 911 and your system shoots the EMT’s. There are perfectly good reasons why you want to stay away from these kinds of systems. The best device for home security is… a dog that barks!

I didn’t mean they’d just stick it there and run. if it were disguised (a hotdog stand? :)) or placed on a building’s terrace, it could be quite potent and dangerous.
anyway it looks like he’s now building a marketable version, so we’ll have a propietary toy version to get our hands on instead of source code. this seems far more reasonable, as it funds his research and restricts use of his design. (you could always develop your own givin the concepts) There are some paintball based ones already out there (google ’em) but their sites are nowhere near as complete, and the look heavy (appear to be heavy gauge, 2in square stuctural steel)

I don’t think that it is necessary to make this with a real gun to be an effective anti burglar device. The fail -unsafe options described above pretty much cover all the good reasons not to use real guns.However, burglars getting hit with multiple airsoft BBs or paintballs whilst sneaking around in the dark of your house would most likely flee rather than proceed with their crime or move closer to the source of pain (which would be hard to judge in the dark of course). Also, sensations felt in the absence of other senses are usually felt more acutely. So the pain and shock would feel much more than the reality. Attach a flash gun and you’ll not only get an ID of your intruder but also a very funny pic of them to share with your neighbours.

I use to make remote sentry,s that would kill and did so it was the only friend one really has in warfare. This the gun lacks a remote heart sensor I did not catch his detector but one must turn off the gun after it has killed the target or you may throw away thirty thousand rounds of amonition on a deade corps. But it scares the hell out of your advisary to see one that mean to shoot him that many times.

Also laser sentry,s as copied on star wars I did the first one. It was a chemical combustion laser with target recognition and acquistion of target. It was put into a five gallon can people loved it in some places because of jesus frog clones where crawling out of there holy holes and butchering any human it could get its tazer on. But most of the cans where rusty buckets. To fix it up and make it shine would bring on kleptominacs. The R2D2 was fix spiff up for the orginal Star Wars movie film in real battle not stage back in 1966 NOT by lucaus. Having two or three R2D2 sentries as documented in the film of a real attack by real clones out on the desert was neat and wipe out about 3 million advancing clones as seen in the original movies. One sentry might use the other sentry,s detection and race a laser beam infor the kill it was so violent seeing the sentry,s compete with each other to make a kill it was frightening.

I live in Fascist Australia & I’m a WWII German Reenactor our problem is a paraniod .Gov, mounting a paintball,Airsoft or BB onto something like this would be totally unacceptable, not to mention the fact that Full & Semi Auto ANYTHINGS are illegal, so I came up with an idea to use a Dummy MG mounted on a tripod, powered by an Auto Windscreen Washer motor & CD Sound System with MG Fire, shoved into a sandbagged bunker it does the job, but it sucks in some ways, namely the fact that the Dummy MG has a wide swinning Arc & it rarely points at someone while making the “Simulated” MG sound, the ability for the unit to track targets would be awesome, anyone figured out software for this type of system?